family
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The Loss No One Could See
Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month On November 13, 2020, I found myself back in the emergency room. It was the same problem. Abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding. Yep. I was pregnant again. And again, I was losing it. A week later, on November 19th, I lay on the examination table with my knees raised,… Continue reading
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It Could Easily Be You
When I was ten years old, my family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, just months after learning to walk again after the car accident. It was the only time we did not live in Chicago during my childhood. Shortly after moving into a big, beautiful home, we were evicted. With only a few family members in… Continue reading
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Breaking From Tradition Can Be a Good Thing
Some families keep their history alive around picnic tables, their roots watered each summer by laughter, shared meals, and stories that stretch back generations. Mine did not. On my mother’s side, there were no great migrations back home for a weekend, no sea of matching shirts declaring our kinship, no annual roll call of who… Continue reading
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Always There Are the Children
Something devastating is happening, a bone-chilling, frightening thing. The children are dying. In this year alone, I have learned of the deaths of four young people, three of them children under 25 years old. All of them were from people I know; they were firstborns, the first fruits of their mother’s wombs. It has made… Continue reading
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The Amazon Bestseller Approach: A Warning
In the words of James Baldwin, “If I love you, I have to make you conscious of what you don’t see.” Here’s the Game: Once upon a time, when print-on-demand publishing became more popular thanks to companies like Amazon and Lulu, self-published authors discovered a powerful manipulation tactic: they could reach a higher ranking by… Continue reading
